Vista - VISTA Ultimate fresh reformat clean Installation failure - hangs...

Hi. I've got a serious problem. I decided to do a fresh installation of Vista Ultimate on my $4000 Asus VX2S Lamborghini notebook (which I got after getting a nice pay bonus back in 2007.

Details of the Lambo are here:
Techgage - ASUS Lamborghini VX2

It was very sluggish and took about 5minutes to loadup. It was slow in multitasking and hanged on Windows Media Centre operations. Played games ok tho - but needed a cooler.

Things improved a bit after I deleted some of the Asus bloatware mentioned in the unofficial asus notebook forum FAQ. Stuff like Splendid, TPM, Asus Protect, Asus live update, power4phone etc...

But it still seemed a tad slow for a US$4000 machine, esp the startup and multitasking.

I mentioned this to my friend a computer guru who advised me to do a format and fresh clean installation. He had a spare moment in the weekend so he formated C drive - including the recovery partition as I did not want the pre-installed Asus software.

However after the 1st reinstall reboot - the installation hangs near the completion mark. I'm puzzled - not sure whats going on. Obviously can't get to desktop or do a safe mode.

Can anyone help? Did a search and it seems to be a rare problem.

BTW, I was using a Vista Ultimate Corporate installation disk. My computer came preinstalled with the VISTA Ultimate OEM copy with only a recovery disk. This caused significant problems which was only resolved after a lot of pain, esp. with the original crappy ASUS graphic card drivers which caused repeated crashes and sleep BSOD failures and couldn't be repaired using the stupid Asus recovery disk)

The computer is spec. No modifications made. Asus changed the motherboard in 2008 after the headphone jack failed. But no problem afterwards.

The notebook was actually running pretty good and reliable before this. The old sleep failure problems was resolved with the long awaited new Nvidia drivers. Installed all the updates, no problem. I just thot the reformat and reinstallation would clear out all the asus crap and make it better. Old school thinking I guess.

The Asus lambo uses a SATA HD which may be the cause of the problem.

We've tried loading up SATA drivers but no help.

(UPDATE: I changed the HD SATA to compatible mode and was able to successfully install XP PRO - my old installation disk - onto the Asus Lamborghini notebook. It works - even without the graphic card drivers. Can't seem to access the internet tho. But I can access D drive and view my storage information like video/photos etc..)

Please help.

Having the same problem using recovery disks sniper968

Not the same laptop but - same issue with restoring it. hangs near completion.

a couple tips i can give you, though i have not found a clean install solution, i did manage to finess my comp into submission with only a 96% recovery completion adn it's been heck ever since.

prep of the comp is golden - run a memory test - i did find a bad modual

make sure your bios timer is set to the correct time - keeping in mind if it is 24hr or 12hr display

Remove all modules - ie:memory card reader modules

if you can - ghost the restore image to your drive - i do not know why the disks cause problems on some laptops adn i'm sure Acer and others like my Sony - do not sit there installing from disk.

Though our comps cause may not be the same for this issues - i can tellyou it is a total pain in the butt to locate the problem - i've been fighting this Recovery for 2 weeks now.

Another recomendation - go Win7

i know others with the same problem or problems with Vista Recovery for manufacturers propietory software, that said the heck with fighting it and went to Win7 and now no problems.

I'm on the verge of it myself and it doesn't cost you anything but time to sign up and download the Beta version at microsoft. And like Ultimate it comes with drivers for DVD for WMP - it's notthe final release and updates often with fixes - but no issues from those i know using it.

best of luck - i'll watch the thread to see if maybe some posts a cure i haven't tried yet for recovery.

Sweet looking laptop btw - may try the Leather look on my Sony
- well maybe not - i have carbon fiber... ;0)

I really don't understand what's going on. It was actually working in Vista before this clean format and fresh up.

XP works ok.

I just installed Vista on top of that and I still get the same problem. It shows installation was ok - then it comes to the black Microsoft Window bootup screen = and shows its loading up forever.

No error messages

sniper968 <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote:
Others have told you that since you did NOT use a disc that had
specific drivers for your machine, you can expect to have problems.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you didn't want "any Asus
software" installed, so you didn't use the recovery partition.

It is looking as if you might have screwed up big time.

Not half as screwed up as you mate.

Sounds like you need more fibre in your diet.

sniper968 - he's only trying ot help here - put the gun down...

no... you can't shoot him one more time... come on now... put it down

down.... no... down... that's it... good sniper968

- okay now... Bill Dagget may have a point abou the drivers - most Computer manufacturers use custom drivers - hence the big bitch about them not keeping them up to date - and your possible issue with your graphics card drivers.

As well this issue made way for the the hacks to update comp manufacturer drivers to the hardware manufaturers latest drivers. MOD laptop being one site that has this software.

Most hardware manufacturers will tell you on their sites - you must use say Acer drivers as they are proprietary drivers. you'll loose feature capabilities if you don't.

try installing those drivers first - then hack them to the latest hardware manutacturers updated driver - as mentioned - there is a way to do this.

installing Vista via a Win Vista disk rather than a Acer Restore disk - could be the problem... your xp install may have worked but the Vista one will not - it's a tad tempermental and more sensitive than XP from what i understand in my readings of others attempting the same.

again nice looking laptop you have - Sony has come out with there leather covered version this year - looks good as well

i enjoy seeing the laptop mods as there aren't a whole lot out there that are real eye catchers and usefull for everyday use.

yours is one of the nicer mods i've seen... now if you can just get it back on track... with vista or the option - Win7

all just trying to help and keep in mind - it can get a tad frustrating at times...
so take your time...

So your issue is not it cannot complete the restore prosess - rather it hangs after the fresh installation of Vista ultimate corporate during boot up - during the black screen prior to log in - correct?

did you make it to the Vista set up user account screen/initializing Vista screen yet? The one were it welcomes you to vista and you add your user name passwords etc etc.

Edit: try these as well.

Go to Accer and get your drivers - install the chipset one first then the rest - rebooting after each driver install - see what happens

and a simple one to try - try booting and putting the Vista installation DVD in the drive - if during intial install, Vista loaded the boot up section on some corrupt HDD sectors, it won't boot up completly because it can't find or doesn't have the files it needs. This is the case for those with multiple drives as well and Vista filling up the Boot partition and putting boot files somewhere else - ie: another drive it can't see or doesn't recognize for boot up.

by putting the installation DVD in during boot up, it should find the files it needs for boot up on the DVD.
- sometimes this works - sometimes it doesn't.

hope this helps - if it does - let us know.

Thanks SonyVGN,

I installed the nvidia graphic driver for the system 2 months ago when it was finally released. not the laptop2go, but the actual ngd from the nv website. Took them over 2 years to release it. It worked perfectly.

The original Asus graphic cards drivers caused the computer not to wake up when it went to sleep. The only recourse from that was a reboot. Which on one occasion caused windows to break down. The stupid Asus recovery disk provided did not offer a repair option. I had to borrow an installation disk to do the repair.

However the computer still loaded up pretty slow. It took about 5 mins + before the HD light stopped flashing.

2 weeks ago, I deleted all the stupid asus bloatware and surprise, it ran much faster.

Last weekend, I thot I'd go one step better and do a fresh installation - which led to my current predicament.

Yeah, the issue is that it cannot complete the restore process. Stops - you can reboot - but it hangs exactly as you say.

Called up Asus and they told me to use the recovery disk. Its loading up right now. I was surprised as I thought it would only work with the image partition.

Some good news. I (found and) loaded the Asus recovery disk and it reinstalled Vista. I lost the drivers disk and the image partition was deleted - ergo, I expected the worse. But it works now.

Surprisingly very well, and smooth. So all's good.

The only hitch was the Sata disk was set to compatible during the installation process; I had set it to compatible when I installed XP. I turned it back to enhanced. But I'm just wondering whether it will cause any problems? Its working ok now.

just got an email notification of your post - only one thing to say now...

Bravo! sniper968 - Bravo !

you're get the official geek smiley -

great job buddy - glad to hear it - happy for you

hopefully mine will come around the same way one day.

chow

edit: Here's a little gift to celebrate your success sniper968...

check these pages out - 99 Performance Tips and Tweaks for Vista
- think you'll find some good tweaks in there

If your like me and got a need for speed, try one of my favorite tweaks for boot up.
- telling Vista to use both processors for boot up to speed up the boot process.

again congrats on your success